Spring is here and that means Rita’s Water Ice is open. Their coconut cream pie Blendinis are to die for.

I’m also trying to figure out when’s the best time to go to Fashion Bug to spend my $50 gift card I got for Christmas. I need new summer clothes. Should I take a day off from work, or go on a Saturday?

My pants come in multiple lengths… all of which are BELOW the ankle… really. If I desire to show MORE leg I wear a skirt.

I’m sure there are people here who love varying/non-full length pants and I fully support your freedom to purchase pants in the length that pleases you, but I really just don’t understand the VAST VARIETY… it makes my head hurt.

Gah, I can’t even THINK about wearing cropped pants or pedal pushers or whatever they want to call them yet. It’s still, like, 45 degrees out and spritzing rain on and off and on and off. Do people actually buy those things when it’s too cold to wear them? Or buy cold-weather clothes when it’s hot? The only way I can bring myself do that is if they’re on sale at deep discount (like the way I bought my winter coat from Lands’ End overstocks for $40 off).

I want to talk about being fat and wearing high heels, because it seems like no matter what I do they HURT a LOT, and I know it’s normal for high heels to hurt, but I thought after a while your feet toughened up or you got used to it, but I don’t, because I’m fat and there’s more weight on my poor beleaguered soles, and you can have my ever-so-cute skyscrapers when you pry them from my cold dead hands, but WHAT DO I DO ABOUT THE PAIN?

Given that genetic screening is possible, and that a persons natural weight is set by genetics, it follows that parents could, within out lifetimes, commission fatness screening of their children’s genes.

Assuming that natural weight is purely cosmetic at all but the extremes, it seems hard to argue that this would be a good thing, but at the same time, can it also be considered bad? After all, the child must have some natural weight, and there’s nothing wrong with not being fat, so it doesn’t actually harm the child, as, for instance, the screening for hearing ability that some deaf couples want to carry out does. Since it doesn’t harm the child, the worst I can think of this is that it wastes medical resources on cosmetics, but that’s just me. Others have much more vehement objections. How about you?

Lexy – the world needs so many different lengths because of all the SHOES. Also, maybe, because of socks. I have these amazing red fishnet anklets with a double ruffle and if I wear long pants? The world would never know. I am down with the different lengths but the naming convention! Oy!

Meowser, it’s 80-some-odd degrees today. I’ve never actually STOPPED wearing cropped pants since moving back to Florida more than 10 years ago!

Ok, here is something I am going through and wonder who out there has successfully navigated this (I hope it makes sense)

I am looking for a new doctor (for many reasons not really related to health per se). And as I begin my search I realize that the doctor I am looking for is someone who understands that calorie restriction (aka dieting) does damage to bodies, especially developing bodies (in my case starting from the time I was 12, slimfast, jenny craig, weight watchers), and that there needs to be a way to heal bodies damaged by calorie restriction. I do truly accept and love my body, and at the same time I don’t think it is a healthy as it could be and want a doctor who doesn’t say “you would be healthier if you lost weight”. That is such an empty phrase. I think that if my damaged body was healed, it would function at its best, and be the weight it is supposed to be.

Those are the knee-length ones, right? I like those! I hate shorter shorts because due to the size differences between my hips/butt and thighs, they always flare out oddly around the thighs if they fit everywhere else. The knee-length ones are cut more like pants through the legs, and don’t do the weird flare thing.

It’s not warm enough here to wear them yet, but I did leave my house this morning in a sweater and no coat. :)

I would love to share in the bounty of various short pant lengths but I suffer from SALS (Short-Assed Leg Syndrome). I may be of average height, 5 feet 6 inches, but I have, without a doubt, some of the world’s shortest legs. Anything other than shorts or full-length slacks just look stupid on me. I’ve tried petites but those don’t fit right around the waist. I have a couple of pair from Lane Bryant that don’t look too bad, but for the most part I just forgo them all together.

As I look for a job that can fill the 6 months between now and when my lease ends (and I move far, far away), I’m finding myself beginning to wonder whether people who complain that “the immigrants/blacks/[insert not-me group of choice] take all the jobs” are really using the fact that many low-wage jobs are held by that group to avoid applying for those jobs, because they’re really afraid that even with better education they’ll be turned down for jobs that are typically thought of as easy jobs any idiot could do.

At least, that’s the fear I caught myself wrestling with yesterday. It helps to be able to see it, though.

i-geek, those are the knee length ones made of suiting materials! As if shorts of any length were EVER business wear! *flail* I mean, I wear some ridiculous shit, but I don’t pretend that it is business wear, you know?

I do like knee-length shorts, and I hate most shorts so that’s saying something. I think the knee length ones in other materials are pedal pushers.

Sarawr, I don’t know how to fix the pain you’ve got from shoes you already own, but I finally started buying dance shoes! I get on the Capezio site, run a search for “Ballroom Shoes” and voila! Cute heels that fit and have great support and NEVER make my feet hurt!! (The “theatrical shoes” category has some cute ones, too, so I always check those out!) Plus, Capezio runs wide, so if your feet are wide (whether due to bones or fat), they’ll still fit. (I wear a WW shoe, and Capezio W fits me fine.) The only downside is the price. They’ll set you back $100-$150 a pair (I always run a Google search for “Capezio discount shoe [stock number]”), and you’ll still have to take them to the cobbler and spend another $25 or so to have street-shoe soles put on them. But I finally decided I’d rather have a few pairs of shoes that fit GREAT than lots of shoes that kinda-sorta-almost fit.

The Rotund– I have no idea, but I will tell you this: I tried on some of those bermuda shorts at LB (which may or may not be city short” and they looked terrible on me! They are not for the chunky of leg, I’ll tell ya.

Yellowhammer– At lunch today I met an adorable puppy, and it licked my face..it made my whole day!

Goodwithcheese– I actually have ten shower gels in my bathroom (an embarassment of riches really) right now because I can never bear to switch out my scents. People who don’t know me all that well who happen to be in my bathroom think I’m crazy.

Bree– If it won’t cause you grief, I vote for a day off from work. Less crowded shops and the joy of not being at work is totally win.

Margaret– I don’t really have a wishlist, but I’m expecting two books today…the new Marya Hornbacher book and one called The Last Lecture.

Sarawr– I am a wuss. Heels kill me so I don’t even try anymore.

Alice– I can’t say I’m anywhere near in favor of that kind of genetic screening. It is one thing to screen for medical problems which might cause suffering and premature death, but to screen for fatness…to me it’s like screening for a child with blonde hair or something. Just sounds wrong.

Lulu– Good luck in your quest for a new doctor! I know how terribly stressful that can be, and I don’t envy you. If you find a good one, be sure and add her or him to the fat-friendly health professionals list!

Lisa in TX– I too suffer from SALS. I’m 5’4″, but it seems like my legs are only slightly longer than my torso.

TR/i-geek: Bleh, city shorts! I just look bad in shorts that go past mid-thigh. And, since I’m unusually short, the shorter pants usually don’t come to the right length on me anyway, so I’m stuck with short shorts, long pants, and varying length of skirt for expression.

Lulu: Funny thing about doctors . . . Mine has a BMI chart on the door of the patient rooms, but I’ve never heard about him commenting on weight. I’m on the low end of the chart, but my husband, sister and both my parents are firmly overweight but he’s never brought it up. I’m not really sure how you’d tell besides the oft referenced letter and time.

Alice: So far as genetic screening of embryos/fetuses goes, I really don’t see how you can allow people to abort just because they don’t want to have the baby now, but not let them pick and chose the kind of baby they want. I don’t want to start a “viability of abortion as birth control” discussion, just that I don’t think “I don’t want a socially stigmatized child” is any less of a reason than “I don’t want any child” for reasoning if you were going to accept that path anyway. However, I really don’t think my money should go to pay for someone else to design their child when, if the really just wanted a child, there are far less expensive ways to go about it. But, before this happens at all, you’d have to accept that weight gain is primarily genetic and having “skinny genes” would be more helpful than “healthy eating/exercise habits.” G’luck with that.

Spring is here and that means Rita’s Water Ice is open. Their coconut cream pie Blendinis are to die for.

Oh HELLZ yeah. I like the classics; Rita’s mango gelati is where it’s at. I love Rita’s so much I even had it at my wedding last summer. The husband and I went there last week even though it was still like 45 degrees out.

FWIW, I like that there are a zillion lengths of pants right now. This means I have SOME hope of getting pants that are the right length for my ridiculously short legs. Unfortunately, the ones I tried on at Avenue all are “modern fit,” and the very LAST thing I need is my torso looking longer and my legs looking shorter. I want the cropped pants in the Classic Fit, dammit! Why do they not have them??

Also, I confess to having worn a shorts-suit to work quite some years ago. I thought it looked really cute. Fairly long shorts, a jacket and a vest. Always wore it with tights and heels. But I wore like a size 10/12 back then, so I got less of that annoying thing where the shorts ride up between chubby thighs. *sigh* Plus, I worked at a University. Anything more than jeans and a t-shirt was usually considered overdressed in that environment. Your mileage–and your dress codes–may vary!

I agree. Way too many horrible things going on. Let’s talk about clothes.

It’s been in the 40s here, and I’ve been wearing capris! When it was 60 last week, I was in the knee length shorts. I suppose it’s all relative – here in MN, now that it’s firmly in the upper 30s – 40s, I put away all my coats and sweaters.

As far as the pants – I need all the lengths. My pants get shorter and shorter with each 10 degree temperature increase. So in a Minnesota spring/summer, I need a good 5 different lengths.

I love the knee length shorts. Anything shorter rides up, no matter what I do, and I’m left with what looks like giant denim underpants. The knee length ones hit a a very flattering length, don’t ride up, and in my field, are acceptable at work if not meeting clients. I heart them!

I also do regular soap changes. Seasonally, and holiday-ly. I like a spicy cinnamon or apple pie one around Thanksgiving, a peppermint one for Christmas. Right now, I’m digging fresh grass or lemon scented ones. As it gets warmer, I’ll want something mai-tai scented!

Karen, I can’t speak for Bree, but the pumpkin scent I have is specifically pumpkin pie. And really, does a person need a reason to want to smell like pie?

javamama, I don’t think he’ll leave. Bill’s all about the prestige jobs, and KU is a bigger fish than OSU. Though with the millions OSU is ready to throw at him, you couldn’t really blame him for going back to his alma mater, ya know?

My favorite pants are, oh… loose and cropped, I guess? I don’t know what you call them, but they hit low on the shin, a few inches above the ankle bone and look great with my Keens or with flats or sandals. You can dress them up or down.

No pedal pushers for me. I don’t like them when they inch up toward the knee.

I’ve got to go buy some shorts and I’m not looking forward to it, but maybe I can deal if loose bermudas are in again. I also joined in indoor soccer league and I need some soccer shorts, which I’m dreading.

Bleah. I’ve become one of those “wears long pants in the summer” people. Sigh.

goodwithcheese, I swap soaps too. Just switched from a Brazil nut flavor to “agrummes” (lemon). Ahhhh. If I had planned better, I would have used the almond one with little bits of the shell in it to transition to summer.

And sarawr – I HEAR you! I’ve always wondered, since wearing heels just about kills me… is it like this for everyone? Or am I abnormally wimpy in the foot-pain arena? or what?

Karen: I bought the pumpkin scent from Bath & Body Works because it was a special edition and it smelled wonderful. I only wore it during the fall & winter seasons. I figured smelling like pumpkin pie was better than eating it, LOL!!! But my scents of choice are fresh and citrusy, like lemon, orange, grapefruit, cherry blossom, and linen.

When I worked at the Saks Fifth Avenue call center, we would have to attend in-services on new products. One of them was for a new Escada fragrance, which smelled like vanilla coke. The woman speaking said they did research that men got turned on by the scent of vanilla and coke. We got a free sample, and boy, us single gals tried it immediately. Needless to say, it didn’t work. Maybe I had to look like Jessica Alba first.

As for city shorts, never tried them. I think they might be too casual for my office. My nice boss lets my coworker and I get away with dressy capris and longer crops during warm months. I do have a pair of denim bermudas and I love them.

fatgirlonadate, I always think, “Man, Paris Hilton wears these things all the time — am I wussier than Paris freaking Hilton?” And then I remember that, oh yeah, Paris weighs 100 pounds while I weigh 200 pounds. However, there has to be some sort of comfort option for the big girls. Insoles don’t seem to do much and different arch sizes just create different pains. I think I might have to save up for some of the dance shoes that Marste mentioned upthread.

Of course, I could get all feminazi and heels-are-a-tool-of-the-man about the issue, but I love cute heels and so I’ll probably just continue to suffer and search. Alas for my low pain threshold.

Well I am going to bitch about the spring weather here in Colorado. I am READY to wear capris, bermudas, ankle length pants with pretty sandals. The problem being that the weather here can change drastically in the space of 8 hours. Currently the trend is wake up to some snow on Monday, 50’s or above on Tuesday, wake up to snow again on Wednesday…etc. Can we just get some sort of regularity here??

And finally, I am currently five months pregnant. Which is great and all, but clothing is really a pain in the ass. Some retailers are outrageously expensive, others sell items that seem almost juvenile in nature. This is all bad in an of itself, but I am also a clothes hound and receive lectures constantly from my mom (grandmother to be) about not buying a ton of items….but I can’t seem to help myself. I hate debating all day and night about what to wear “tomorrow”….I like having several options I am comfortable with. Ugh.

I only wear full-length pants and skirts of varying lengths. I feel like cropped pants make me look stumpy, and shorts ride up very uncomfortably. However, short skirts are much more comfy (especially since my discovery of the Avenue miracle seamless bike shorts) and still cool enough for summer. Plus, they’re cute!

The thing that gets me is that I have a hard time finding pants that aren’t too long. I’m 5′ 6″ and I usually need “petite” length, so what do all the women who are shorter than me doing? Are they just wearing pedal pushers as full-length pants? I’m baffled. My theory is that all the jeans are expecting me to wear heels, which I don’t do.

I am SO glad to find other people who find the shorter shorts (as opposed to short shorts) more flattering than the longer ones! I have short legs, so the longer Bermuda shorts and the like catch me right in the bend of the knee where they look terrible and are horribly uncomfortable. A mid-thigh short is much more flattering on me and makes my legs look longer as a bonus.

Of course, this discussion of shorts is only academic – even though I was traipsing around in the not yet green grass in bare feet this morning (my feet are wrecked from our trip to Las Vegas), we have snow due tonight and all day tomorrow. This is what passes for spring around here.

(And I won’t even get started on cropped/capri/ankle length pants….they all look horrific on me. Same with 3/4 sleeves – I will be SO glad when they go out of style!)

I’m petite, 5’2″, and find some shops are awful for trouser length. But others have petite ranges that make it look as though my trousers and feet have had an argument!

I’m just watching ‘How to Look Good Naked’ (I’m in the UK). As usual it makes me want to cry a bit. Why? Because they show women JUST LIKE ME – women who aren’t airbrushed, have stretch marks, and some who like me spend way too much time hating their body for not fitting some perceived societal ideal.
There’s a woman on the trailer who is curvy and luscious – probably about a UK 16 – with a gorgeous figure. And my boyfriend said ‘your bum looks like that’ and I found myself disagreeing with him. Crazy.
Thanks for being here shapelings, I look forward to gaining some degree of sanity around my body and putting it into some perspective.

I look awful in pretty much all cut-off trousers/shorts/pedal-pushers etc. I used to look okay in culottes, (I had some long, pleated grey ones that were fab back in the 80s), but, on the whole, it’s full length or don’t for moi.

And heels? No way. Not unless they are platform wedges and really supportive. Us Pisceans are martyrs to our feet you know. All I see when I look at a Jimmy Choo or a Louboutin is crippling pain and, probably, a broken ankle to boot.

Eve: ” I’m 5′ 6″ and I usually need “petite” length, so what do all the women who are shorter than me doing? Are they just wearing pedal pushers as full-length pants? I’m baffled.”

Do you have short legs and a long torso? I’m 5’0″ with a short torso and long limbs (meaning that petite tops fit lengthwise in the torso but the sleeves are usually an inch too short). Petite pants fit me well if they can be dry cleaned or if the material is pre-shrunk. Jeans are great at first, but then after a few wash/tumble dry cycles the legs shrink up and they’re too short, as I like them to mostly cover my heels. I’ve ordered a pair of regular length jeans from a store online. I think they’ll be too long at first, but if they fit everywhere else I’ll wash them a few times and maybe hem them up a bit.

I need to try one of those sites where you can custom order your jeans. I think I need a 31″ inseam, which I cannot find. Petites are always 29″ or maybe 30″ if the manufacturer is feeling generous, whereas regulars are anywhere from 32″-35″.

I hate to be a downer, and really, I usually love the fashion discussion but …

I’m having a really hard time loving my body today. I got on a scale yesterday for the first time in months and I now weigh more than I ever have, pushing a number I can’t even type. I’ve been trying so hard to be kind to myself, working on integrating the concepts of HAES into my thinking and not judging my worth by the shape or size of my body. I thought I was doing well, until I made the stupid decision to step on that scale.

I don’t want to feel this way. Any suggestions to help me avoid slipping back into the crazy Weight Watching of my past? Also, to not cry?

I have a really hard time finding pants too. I have an insanely high natural waist – practically just under my boobs – and then a very long torso and short legs. Also my tummy sticks out. If things fit the tummy and the butt, the thighs are swimming in fabric and I’m always having to yank them up because they don’t reach my waist. And I always have to have any pair of jeans hemmed.

I bloody hate heels too. Ocasionally I find some heeled boots that aren’t excruciating (usually lace-ups, because I can make them fit better round the ankle), but the last pair of heeled shoes I owned – cute red wedges with a 1950s-esque round toe – ended up slung in a skip outside my house after I limped home from a restaurant cursing Catherine de Medici to the skies for inventing the fuckers.

I love the heels too (and the height–I’m 5’11” barefoot, but a nice pair of 4-inchers never fails to have a salubrious effect on my psyche) and I’m also convinced that the pain is partially weight related. I’m pretty solidly in the middle of “normal” BMI bullshit category, but it still means a significantly heavier amount of weight on the poor two or three bones on the ball of each foot.

I’m a swimmer, so am completely unused to workout-induced foot pain, and as I try to transition into running as well, I note that I’m a total wimp about blisters. I have a good friend who is around my weight, a little shorter, but a marathoner, and she’s always in stilettos or other heels–she moves great in ’em. She said that she thinks the foot pain management skills from running is a big part of it.

I recommend those Foot Petals inserts of various sorts, and any gel pads you can find for the balls of your feet. I tried Insolia, which promises to make you feel like your wearing heels of only half the height, but their tagline is “the magic is in the placement” and I guess I’ve never placed them correctly.

Although this is mostly a puppies-and-shorts-focused conversation thus far, I’m going to take the open-thread opportunity to go somewhere serious. . .

I want to thank you – Kate in particular, and Sweet Machine, and Fillyjonk, and the rotund and goodwithcheese too (goodwithcheese, I can’t express how much your blog has helped me), and really every Shapeling who posts here. Thank you to everyone who posts and comments and is part of the online fatosphere – or should I say sphereosphere? :) – because you have made a real difference to my life.

I’m recovering from an eating disorder right now, and I’m several pounds above what I consider my “natural” weight, which is itself a bit (or, a lot) above my idea of an ideal weight for my body (though i now recognize that my idea of “ideal” is actually unhealthy-low). I was ready to seek recovery, and I’ve been working hard at it, so I give myself some credit too. Still, I have a lot of body-hate going on, and reading fat-positive blogs has really made a dent in that. I still have a lot of body-hate, unfortunately, but even seeing the body-hate as a problem (instead of the fat as the sole problem) is an amazing step forward. and I thank all of you for that.

It’s certainly a struggle, and some days I really, really hate my fat, but this is by far the best I’ve felt about my body in years, and by far the best I’ve treated my body in years & years.

Before, I thought that “recovery” meant either eating well and being unhappy with my body forever, or learning to live with semi-restricted-but not too-restricted-eating. now i see that true recovery is both eating well and being happy with my body, and with myself. and i’m working on it.

Alice, I think part of the reason people feel nervous about screening for fat is that they see it as a slippery slope to the idea that the body is “perfectible” — and that “perfect” is the Aryan ideal. If you can select for non-fatness, why stop there — why not select for blue eyes and full hair and prominent cheekbones? And then what happens when the child doesn’t turn out “perfect” after all, when they don’t have an utterly charmed life due to in-womb manipulations? The concern I think is less for the preservation of fat than it is for the preservation of imperfect humanity.

Luckily such tests will almost certainly be prohibitively expensive.

I heard stories about some magic fucking insoles that were supposed to redistribute your weight in heels so that it was even along your whole foot… does anyone remember this?

I wear heels, if they’ve got enough bottom surface area, but I walk to and from the subway in my Keens. I wince when I see people, even hundred-pound people, walking along city streets in stilettos; they almost always seem to be doing grave damage to their shoes, their ankles, or both.

Today, though, I was wearing these amazing Mary Janes with a round toe and a striped wooden heel that I got on super-sale, and the rubber thingie on the bottom of one of the heels fell off. I found it, but by that point I’d already dropped them off at the shoe place where they charged me ten bucks and said I could pick them up tomorrow. At least I won’t have to carry my shoes home tonight or back in tomorrow morning.

As much as I like the current spring weather, I wish it could have held off a bit as I have no spring coat. I have one that will fit in another 20 pounds, but for now it is too tight across the bust. So I’m wearing fleece, and combinations of light jackets and shawls.

I’m not totally convinced all the pain for high heels is weight related. For one reason, when I was (via starvation dieting) a size 2 or 4, I don’t remember it being that much better. For another, most of my thin friends wear flip flops to work and change at the office just like most of my fat friends. I have no doubt that some people can wear heels iwthout pain – or are willing to work through the pain – but I think for a lot of us it’ s another “fantasy of being thing” moment.

i-geek: I’ve never really thought about the length of my legs in relation to my torso, but perhaps they are super-short. I think the best inseam length for me is 29″.

Clothes are fun, aren’t they? I was in Florida a couple of weeks ago and got a taste of skirt weather. Now I’m back in my tired old full-length pants. I thought about wearing a skirt yesterday but I’m glad I didn’t because it was freakin’ cold.

I wish I could wear heels. I think they look a lot better, and they make my legs look awesome. However, they make my feet hurt a lot, which is not awesome. My mother think that if I weren’t so fat they wouldn’t hurt, which makes some sense to me as it would mean less weight to be distributed in an unaccustomed way. I’ve heard from other sources, though, that women who don’t learn to wear heels at a young age can’t wear them when older, no matter what their weight.

I second wearing theater shoes for comfort and walkability. I have two pair of character shoes and they are also my default business day nice shoes. They are made to dance around in and are tons more comfy than most high heels, they generally come in several different heal heights also.

Gretchen- About 6 months ago I had to sit and listen during a job interview about how qualified I was for a job, how great I would be for it, how wonderful it was that I graduated from college in the top 10% of my class, then how they couldn’t hire me because I don’t fluently speak Spanish. I live in Oklahoma and the job was for a caseworker. So no I don’t think that all people are complaining about “easy” jobs because they are afraid. I had never considered the Spanish population in my city as an issue, until I learned that I couldn’t get a job because they can not require that the people receiving the public services learn English, so now they just require the public service providers to learn Spanish. I have a phonic dyslexia issue that prevents me from speaking Spanish well, however I can read it at a functional level. I’m not disputing anyone’s right to be in the country, but I do wish they would make efforts to learn the language. I was absolutely crushed by the news, but hey now i have a better paying job with better benifits than i would have had as a case worker. If they want to hire less qualified people based on their language status, its their loss.

They aren’t the heeliest of heels, but La Canadienne has some lovely wedges for summer.http://www.lacanadienne.ca/
Their boots feel like mocassins while being awesomely stylish, and have some of the best insoles around, and it looks like the summer sandals have the same kind of insole.

Oh, I don’t think all the pain of heels comes from my weight — but I think it’s worse pain and lasts longer because of my weight. I know that high heels are killer for everyone, but most (smaller) people seem to have a point where they get past it (either it becomes ignorable or it reduces in intensity), whereas I just don’t. The pain never stops, increases instead of decreases, and centers on my arch (i.e., stress-related ligament stretching). As a former pointe dancer, I find this pretty bizarre, but it’s a totally different ang longer-lasting kind of pain. I’m fairly sure it wasn’t so bad when I was thin, as well — I used to wear heels day in and day out, and I’d gripe a little but it never became this sort of all-consuming, sit-on-the-mall-floor-and-cry deal.

I don’t think it’s a fantasy of being thing; I think it’s a fantasy of finding the right insoles. Fat girls rock heels, and I am determined to carry on. :P

I have started doing Iyengar yoga. I don’t love it, but I need to do it, and it’s the only style available at my lovely ladies-only gym. The last time I did yoga was near the start of my whole get fit thing, and it’s amazing how different it is now that I’m strong.

I hate “un-pants”, by which I mean anything in that indeterminate length between shorts and full-length pants. Bermudas are iffy, but if they’re right above the knee, I can live with them. I also think the “dress shorts” are about the dumbest thing ever.

My other current clothing pet peeve is PUFFY SLEEVES. I hate hate hate them. I have biggish arms and wide shoulders, and they invariably hit RIGHT where my arm is the fattest, giving me some arm muffin-top action. I did, however, see a shirt at Wal-Mart, of all places, that put a little elastic in the band of the sleeve….which might at least eliminate the bulge. However, it was of a fabric that required ironing, and I therefore summarily rejected it.

I feel the pain on the heels – first, I’m a klutz, and have a history of sprained ankles to prove it. Second, OUCH. I don’t know if it’s a fat thing, though – even some of my skinny friends bitch about how much heels hurt. I therefore stick to the chunkier, lower ones (3″ is about my limit, ever, and usually it’s 2″). And I can’t walk in wedges at all.

Further – why why why do so many sandal manufacturers make sandals with SLIPPERY INSIDES? Seriously. People wear them in the SUMMER when it’s HOT. Slidy feet = blisters. I don’t want to wear socks with sandals….that defeats the whole purpose of sandals.

I’m not sure about the heels thing either. When I was younger (and thinner) I wore them more often. I think I was more tolerant of pain. Then, as I grew older, developed arthritis and fibromyalgia, and gained weight, they got more and more uncomfortable. But which of the many factors was the cuplrit, I don’t know. I have found I’m more able to wear heels now, but only because I spend the money to buy really well made ones. A great pair with a 2-inch heel, slightly thicker than a stilleto, made with nice italian leather, a slightly springy, broad sole, and a great, cushiony inside feels a hell of a lot better than a cheap cardboard and plastic stilleto, but they also cost a ton more.

Also, slidy feet = SMELLY. Lordy Moses, do slippery sandals make your feet smell. I can get around this with insoles, but guess what? There is no such thing as a toddler-sized insole in these parts, and my three-year-old is pretty insistent upon wearing sandals now that it’s warm. This means that I get to scrub the damn things out with an antibacterial wipe every night, because his feet are tiny, but they are strong in the force. (And by “the force,” I mean “stench of death,” because damn.)

I have a couple of pairs of Insolia (fillyjonk, I think they’re the magic fucking insoles you were talking about!) and they’re nice enough…they take the pain from my 4 inch stilettos from crippling down to just nasty. :P

But for everyday shoes, Target’s wedges and heels are insanely comfy. And cheap, too, of course; I heart them.

Bree, you must be from the east coast…the only people that I know who know about Rita’s are east coast people (I’m orginally from NJ, I live in MO right now). I miss Rita’s so bad…although Andy’s is a nice replacement.

I have no clothes. I was kicked out of my bedroom because my brother’s family came to stay, and they needed it, and the consequences of that seem to involve my not getting laundry done, so that now it is 2 in the afternoon and I still have no clothes.

And my mother keeps bothering me to go do yard work, but I can’t do yard work in my pajamas, and so I’m having to do laundry and sit inside, which resulted in me having to listen to my mother and my grandmother sitting in the kitchen discussing dieting and exercising and OMG CALORIES BOOGA BOOGA, and I wanted to say something, or at least write a blog post about it, but it seems like all I do on LiveJournal is get preachy and compain about my family so I decided not to.

And so now I feel all gross because I spent all yesterday cleaning house for visiting family and I can’t take a shower because I have nothing to change into afterwards and laundry is taking forever.

In the sandal discussion, I find I can’t really wear sandals very well no matter what the style. Either there’s something that goes between the toes and bothers me, or they don’t stay on properly, or they’re too slidy (which does smell!) or something.

If I could just, like, stick some putty or something to the bottom of my foot so that it doesn’t burn or get stabbed, I would totally walk around essentially barefoot.

Or I wear sneakers, mostly because they allow me to wear socks, and I have the most radical socks this side of the galaxy, yo.

Oh, Lane Bryant. I love your pants, and they fit so well. But your shirts that are not stretchy cotton…They are made for women who are taller than me and have larger boobs. I so wanted the cute blue shirt to fit, but it pooched weirdly at the boobs.

And potential future sewing projects, I’m thinking about you. I just got distracted by buying a house, various house issues, and gardening. I do miss the sewing.

Oh yes, there is the color issue, Fillyjonk. I got so desperate for shoes that fit that I didn’t care anymore, LOL. If you look hard though, you can also sometimes find other colors, and in shoes cuter than the standard character types. But still, there aren’t many colors, I’ll give you that.
That said, I think these two are cute (and come in a couple of colors besides black and “nude white person” :D):http://www.capeziostore.com/3_Latina-p18194.htmlhttp://www.capeziostore.com/Crisstina__3-p18918.html

I seem to remember one of the discount sites also offering to dye the shoes for you for an additional $20 bucks or so. I’m not sure how dyeing the leather would work, though, and of course I can’t find the site at the moment. If I can track it down, I’ll post it.

Hey, I know you already posted about the size 16 English beauty queen, but a chat at the Washington post that I read on Tues by Gene Weingarten talked about it today and I got so angry! I would like to know what the shapelings feel about this and maybe can help him see the light. I really like the chats, but this made me really lose respect for him. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2008/04/01/DI2008040102261.html
p.s. he won the pulitzer yesterday

Moonlight0806 – I can certainly see what you mean there, though that’s not exactly what I was talking about. I do think that if that was a requirement for the job, they should have listed it right off the bat! Because that is a qualification, for that sort of job in that particular environment. So whoever else they hired may have been less qualified in other areas, but more able to communicate with the clients, and thus more qualified in that area.

I was referring more to customer service type jobs – the type where any sort of education beyond middle school or so is a bonus, but not really necessary. Sorry if that was unclear.

Bree, you probably won’t see this so far down in the thread, but I just got a couple of Fashion Bug coupons in the mail that I won’t be using. $20 off $70 and $30 off $100 (I think). They’re good until 4/22. Holler at me if you want them to boost your gift card buying power – I’m guessing Kate can pass along my email address since it’s required for me to post comments.

A Rita’s opened near me but I still haven’t been! The line is always enormous — is it as good as all that?

Is it as good as SEA SALT CARAMEL ICE CREAM?

Insolia is exactly what I was thinking of, thank you. So the verdict is “basically okay,” huh?

In other news, a dude standing behind me in line felt the need to comment on the size of my lunch. (I don’t know how he even knew it was lunch — it was 3:00, for all he knew it was a large SNACK not a small lunch). I just stared at him. Hopefully that made him feel like as much of an idiot as it would have if I’d been able to make a cutting comment.

My articles keep getting killed and I have a facial tic from (presumably) the effort of trying to overcome ADD day in and day out. But at least my office doesn’t smell like epoxy anymore.

On Shoes: Zappos has outlets in Las Vegas. I figured no good could come of that. Most of the shoes are in the outlet for a reason, but I did find a pair of Tevas for $10. They saved my feet on the last day.

I don’t even want to contemplate heels because my feet are still so completely wrecked from the heels I wore to dinner Saturday. But damn, I looked GOOD.

Okay, that “>_<” at the top of the page (by Lizzie- I commented when I was at school) was actually a comment, but I don’t know where it went wrong lol…Probably the crappy school computers.

I was just pissed off because all us high schooler kids were given a paper that we were supposed to give our parents which has our height, weight, and our percentile listed.

Everyone opened their letters to their parents (of course). I, being very pissed off, tore up the paper and threw it in the recycling bin, much to the dismay of my homeroom teacher.

This whole thing just annoys me! Not to mention EVERYONE was talking about the papers today. It made some of my friends feel like their is something wrong with them (my one friend was in the normal range and she was freaking out)…And I don’t know what to do about it- there isn’t anything I can do- my homeroom teacher was rabbling on about how it’s a state law.. uGh… I only have 7 more weeks! Why must they make these 7 weeks hell?

Alice- Probably not reading this far down the thread, but deaf couples who select for deaf children don’t think they’re ‘harming’ their child. They think they’re choosing a child who will share a culture and language with them. I know it’s counterintuitive for us ‘hearies,’ but it’s the natural outgrowth of the radical deaf rights movement. If deafness is simply a different mode of being in the world, then why shouldn’t they be able to choose if their child is deaf?

I also second, though perhaps from another vantage point, the idea that you can’t start picking and choosing the reasons women can have abortions. As Bitch PhD so frequently says, you either trust women or you don’t. I hate that people might have abortions because their kid will be fat (and they *do* have abortions because their kid will be a girl), and we can work to educate and destigmatize as much as possible, but in the end it’s part of what ‘choice’ means.

We can totally talk about knee pain. It sucks that you ladies are having it. My knees have been painless lately, but my right knee is making a gross clicking noise when I climb stairs. It doesn’t hurt at all but the sound makes me cringe.

Hey EmmKay – I totally hear you. A friend on IM the other day totally told me to “get off my ass” when she saw a picture of me, which came right on the heels of my discovering that I was the biggest woman in my bellydancing class. That was enough to push me into doubt.

But remember to stick with the “health” angle of HAES. If you slid back onto WW, a) would you really lose any weight? b) would you lose it in a truly healthy way? and c) would it stay off forever, or just come back with friends later? (Probably the answer to 2 of those questions will be “no”.) Keep nourishing your body with HAES. Just hang in there.

Gaak, don’t talk to me about knee pain. I can’t sleep at night because my right knee goes into pain overdrive and I can’t find a position that doesn’t make it hurt. I’ve been taking naproxin twice a day and that isn’t even denting the pain. My hubby is on my case for not using a cane, but then my left knee starts hurting :P

Oh well, I’ve so many ideas for designs for my CafePress shop I can try and keep my mind off the owies playing with my graphics programs.

I think I know of this Rita’s place, though in Pittsburgh they’re Rita’s Italian Ice. I love their gelati.

Too bad I’m in Iowa right now and it FUCKING SNOWED TODAY.

I find shoes very frustrating. I wish I were more tolerant of heels, because I love being close to an average height for once, but I’m just not willing to put up with the pain. Also my big toes curve upward, and nearly every closed-toe dress shoe doesn’t have enough height in the toe box, so after an hour or so of compression my feet are dying, regardless of heel height. Round toes have made a bit of a comeback, but it can still be difficult.

This summer I did find the most adorable pair of platform cork-soled sandals that are surprising comfortable. My theory is that the cork platform is shock-absorbent enough to give the balls of my feet some relief.

Mostly though, once the weather stays consistently above 55 or so, it’s birks, all the time.

My puppy is dying. She has multiple heart defects and they can’t be treated or cured. We’re having a hard time deciding when to euthanize. She’s so happy, trotting around and wagging her tail and playing with my kitty.

It’s when she struggles to “catch her breath” that gets us. So hard to know when the right time is.

Naturalizer brand heels are reasonably comfortable. Surprisingly, since nearly all heels cause me great discomfort. I had to buy some though for harp (it makes using the pedals easier) and the Naturalizers were the only ones I could even stand up in for more than a few minutes. I’ve heard Fluevogs are also relatively comfortable, and they are also incredibly cute, but I did not have $350 to spend.

And knee pain. I’ve been having some knee pain and one’s brain tends to go OMG ITZ CUZ UR FATTY, but I asked my physiotherapist about it and it was not because I am fat, it is because I just need to do some more strengthening of certain leg muscles. I’m fairly convinced that a great deal of the musculoskeletal problems associated with being fat (which the fat-is-unhealthy people love to yack about) could be fixed or improved not by losing weight as is so often recommended, but a few simple physiotherapy sessions.

Also re: genetic fixes for fat. I reckon it’s an incredibly bad idea to eliminate humanity’s famine/crisis/etc survivial tactic. Too bad if we “fix” everyone’s genes and then large-scale disaster happens and there’s no food and people all starve because they don’t have famine-resistant metabolisms anymore. That’s a very generalised argument, I know, but I really think it’s a very naive thing to do.

EmmKay, your user name is my real-life initials. Also, I think we all have periods were we feel like that and, for me, that is when I have to be super careful not to make any decisions about my body based on emotion. Muscling through it, with a heavy side of logic, works for me, but I don’t know if that’s for everyone.

The scale can be a really powerful trigger. Doing something symbolic, like beating the shit out of it with a sledgehammer, might help you feel a little more free from it.

As for shorts – UGH. I have never liked them, though I can tolerate the longer lengths. It has nothing to do with my legs, which I pretty much love, and everything to do with shorts being stupid and uncomfortable, even the ones custom made for me that my family insisted on getting me in Thailand because THEY were too hot to wear jeans. Harrump.

Yeah, I got real pissed. He’s not very funny. He had a clever idea for an article; fucking yawn.

Yeah, and the whole premise of that article is, “Oh, those PLEBES who think getting to work on time is more important than pausing drinking in the work of this Great Musician.” Nice that HE doesn’t get written up for being late. Wankbot.

This whole thing just annoys me! Not to mention EVERYONE was talking about the papers today. It made some of my friends feel like their is something wrong with them (my one friend was in the normal range and she was freaking out)…And I don’t know what to do about it- there isn’t anything I can do- my homeroom teacher was rabbling on about how it’s a state law.. uGh… I only have 7 more weeks! Why must they make these 7 weeks hell?

There’s a STATE LAW requiring the school to calculate your BMI and send that information to your parents? What for??? To panic and embarrass teenagers, creating more opportunity for segregation and harassment among students? So that your parents can start think your unhealthy when you’re fine? I mean, the only parents who might actually be influencing their children’s weight in a negative manner by abusing them, force feeding them, starving them or whatever certainly aren’t going to be influenced by some paper with completely worthless number on it.

BAH.

See. Stuff like that is why I switched to college instead of high school when I was 16. Though I never had to force my parents to sign some dumbass document alerted my father the physician of my BMI..

Of course, if they had, I just would have forged the signature, but still.

And ditto on the stupid-ass BMI reports. If they are trying to create a generation of kids who hate their bodies, are completely neurotic about food, absolutely dread working out and eating vegetables, etc., they couldn’t be doing a better job. Bleh.

My knees have been painless lately, but my right knee is making a gross clicking noise when I climb stairs. It doesn’t hurt at all but the sound makes me cringe.

Mine make a crunchy sound when I climb stairs. I’m used to it and generally don’t notice it unless I’m going upstairs and it’s quiet in the house. Then I’m all “hey there…crunchy knees.”

A weird little something to keep in mind if you’re having constant knee pain–if you were once pretty active and then stopped for whatever reason, you can develop a patella-femoral disorder. I had been Tae-Bo-ing like a mofo and then got so sick of Billy Blanks that I had to break up with him. As a result, my thigh muscles shortened and pulled up my kneecaps. A few sessions with a really, REALLY ridiculously hot physical therapist named Tim and it improved enormously.

Even five or six years later…I pine for Tim to come and massage the back of my thighs.

Fat Louie:Alice- Probably not reading this far down the thread, but deaf couples who select for deaf children don’t think they’re ‘harming’ their child. They think they’re choosing a child who will share a culture and language with them.

No, they’re forcing their child not to share in the language and culture of the hearing world. Being born with hearing does not prevent a person from learning sign-language as one of their native languages, or from enjoying any of the same things deaf people do. The inverse is not true.

fillyjonk:The concern I think is less for the preservation of fat than it is for the preservation of imperfect humanity.

I would have to be surprised if that was in fact the main reason, since ambition is usually regarded as a virtue. Complatency is also a virtue, but then only when faced with goals that are impossible. Yet, to actually have the chance at a better approximation of perfection right in front of your face, and then just walking away… well, I just can’t empathize with the idea that imperfection is actually desirable, instead of just tolerable when unavoidable.

At the same time, it does perhaps speak to the shallowness of the world when the first thing people think of is ,”But what if everyone looked the same!?” Well, so what? Your looks don’t determine who you are, so everyone looking the same wouldn’t make everyone be the same. There are so many more pragmatic examples of abuse that people’s future appearance is hardly worth mentioning. Besides that, there’s the fact that using blue eyes and blond hair in particular makes an implicit argumentum ad Nazium.

Hey Christine: I got the FB coupons today! I don’t know if I’ll be going on those dates but we’ll see. Thanks though!

I finally finished watching the new Doctor Who ep, thanks to the power of teh internets and it was quite good, although I’m not happy about a certain person returning because the last time she was on she ruined the show and that’s all I will say!

If only I could take a sledgehammer to the scale. Unfortunately, it was my husband’s purchase, as I refused for years to have one in the house.

That just points to other issues … like the fact that my husband is of the “calories in, calories out” school, and holds himself out as living proof of that. I can’t fault him – he’s busted his ass for the last two years and made huge changes, lost 80 pounds, dropped his body fat by more than 10%, etc. (Note, however, that as buff as he is, his BMI is still “overweight” because to get down to “normal”, he’d have to take his body fat to something like 12%).

So, I live with it every day. My husband has never said a negative word to me about my body or my weight, bless him, and I know he loves me no matter what I weigh. But between his example of “success” and my struggle to keep my self-loathing from influencing my daughter, it feels like there are so few places to just … find support for living in my body as it is, without exploding in disappointment and despair.

(P.S. The Rotund: my user name is also made up from my first and middle initials … I’m so creative, aren’t I?)

I don’t know what this Rita’s thing is that you all are raving about but I’m going to Rogue @ 5:00 tonight, I can’t decide if I’m going to have some of their house-distilled gin or a hazlenut brown nectar beer.

I’m thinking buffalo chips for an appi…mmm…

I need to get some work done first though, I have been so effing unproductive today.

EmmKay, don’t get back on the scale. But do find yourself a safe time and place and go ahead and cry. Tears are one of the ways that stressy-emotion chemicals get flushed out of the body. Cry for the things that make you feel like crying. You get to be sad. You get to express your emotions, even the ones that don’t look pretty. It’s OK. Really truly.

For stinky shoes try freezing them for 24+ hrs. It’s s’posed to kill of the bacteria that cause the smell. Don’t ever wear the same pair of shoes often enough to have that problem :) so I haven’t tried it personally.

TattooedIntellectual:For stinky shoes try freezing them for 24+ hrs. It’s s’posed to kill of the bacteria that cause the smell.

I don’t know if they works, but if it does, it’s not for the reason given. Bacteria are not so easily killed as that; it just slows them down. Boiling would work, but I wouldn’t recommend it for shoes.

<i?A Rita’s opened near me but I still haven’t been! The line is always enormous — is it as good as all that?

Is it as good as SEA SALT CARAMEL ICE CREAM?</i?

Oh yes, it’s all that AND MORE. The water ice* flavors tend to be simple, like cherry or mango or coconut, and the taste is like the most delicious sno-cone or shave ice you’ve ever had.

You can get water ice by itself, or you can get it together with frozen custard, either parfait-style (called a gelati) or blended together (called a Misto).

Okay, now I’m going to have to stop off at Rita’s on my way home from work.

* In Philly we call it “water ice,” even though in other places (including Rita’s itself) it’s referred to as “Italian ice” or sometimes “Italian water ice.” Either term suffices, although using “water ice” will win you points with Philadelphians.

Laurie, there’s nothing I’d like more right now than to talk about your knee pain. Seriously speaking. We can commiserate. Unfortunately, I can’t find your first mention of it anywhere. What pain is it?

I have what the doctor calls, quote, “Synovial plicae — also known as a plica band — across the right condyle, probably precipitated by some form of microtrauma.” As nearly as I can gather, this means that I have a small band of hardened tissue across the top right-hand side of my right kneecap, probably caused from running. It’s a beautiful thing. It causes me a small nagging pain pretty much all the time. Isn’t that awesome? Even better, it may never go away. How about you? One of my recent interrogators (http://blog.askmisspriss.com/?p=63) good-naturedly complained of “peculiar shooting pains,” which, when I read about, actually made me feel comparatively lucky.

Shoes! I have never been able to tolerate heels and I realized a couple of months ago that I have plantar fasciitis, so my feet hurt all the damn time. I got a pair of these rosette ballet flats and when I put them on at home I almost yelped from the pain. I want to get these insoles that you mold to your foot and bake at home.

Or I guess I could go to the doctor for my foot pain, but the answer will be a big honking shot in my heel plus an admonishment to lose weight, and I’m not in the mood to confront a doctor and tell him to STFU, especially since I inherited this stupid malady from my dad.

I’ve been wanting to ask people: do they have good experiences with the Lane Bryant Right Fit jeans holding up in the inner thigh area? I used to have several pair of their older style but the inner thigh wore through in nothing flat (which made me feel even fatter; thanks a lot!). I’ve been eyeing a pair of the Right Fits, despite the alleged cat pee smell, but I don’t want to blow $40 on jeans that I’ll chuck in a few months because of my damn thighs.

Also, I love my Birks and refuse to give them up for flipflops, even if I have moved to Florida. True story follow-up: my mother has been to Germany twice, both times to visit my brother. And both times, she made him help her get to the Birkenstock factory. :)

Oh, and I got to waste my daily portion of sanity points when I was getting my daily dose of way-left news on Democracy Now! A guest was on to talk about the food riots in the third world — a terribly sad topic — and had to point out that “six of ten Americans are over their normal weight.” I’m thinking I ought to write them a letter, but I don’t have much hope. The so-called obesity crisis is one of the few things that progressive media swallows whole and it drives me mad.

Everstar, if you wear the red six in the right fit jeans, I’ll sell you my pair for $20 plus shipping. I bought them right when they were introduced in the stores and I think I got the wrong fit or something. I washed them once or twice with vinegar to get rid of the smell.

Yet, to actually have the chance at a better approximation of perfection right in front of your face, and then just walking away… well, I just can’t empathize with the idea that imperfection is actually desirable, instead of just tolerable when unavoidable.

Well then I guess you’re all about aborting fat babies, then, and good luck to you. You asked why people felt uncomfortable with the idea, and it’s because the ambitious drive towards perfection that you’re talking about tends to end badly.

Besides that, there’s the fact that using blue eyes and blond hair in particular makes an implicit argumentum ad Nazium.

Implicit argument? Did you miss the part where I said “Aryan ideal”? Our standards of beauty and perfection are overwhelmingly white, including blond hair and blue eyes (Tara just got a post reposted on Racialicious on how that plays out in eye color, if you’re interested in hearing a WOC’s perspective on these beauty standards, which something tells me you aren’t). And frankly, I’d be more than a little disappointed in anyone whose alarm bells didn’t go off when talking about an implacable drive towards making the population fit better with Aryan beauty standards through genetic manipulation or selective breeding (including selective gestation). In fact, I’d be more than a little disgusted.

I am so, so, so damn tired of having to explain over and over and over again why it’s NOT OKAY to laugh at fat people. Sick to death.

My friend posted this shitty, ignorant thing on myspace, thinking it was funny…I won’t post it (sanity watchers), but it was basically a thin guy kissing and groping a fat girl, and it was captioned “pwned”…you know, like it’s the worst thing in the world to be “caught” kissing a fat chick. And I told him I thought it was fucked up, and he JUST DOESN’T GET IT. My friend. He’s supposed to be my friend. And I’m just. fucking. tired.

You asked why people felt uncomfortable with the idea, and it’s because the ambitious drive towards perfection that you’re talking about tends to end badly.

And not just aesthetically, though I do feel the loss of phenotypic variation would be sad. Or, you know, how lack of genetic variation would seriously sever the human ability to adapt to new situations via mutation, and increase the chances of negative resulting inbreeding.

Especially considering that those “ideal” blue eyes are the result of inbreeding in the first place, so blue eyed people are already inbred. And it has been suggested that fat is more genetically dominant than thinness, which suggests that thin is probably more likely to result from inbreeding as well.

But beyond that, there are all sorts of consequences that we may not be able to prepare for. See genetically enhanced pigs (This America Life did a whole story on this). They genetically enhanced them to have more babies and grow more muscle tissue. Unseen result? They now can’t survive the cold. So the pigs had to be moved indoors. Unseen result? They now don’t naturally develop antibodies, meaning they are prone to viruses and have to be given all sorts of medication. Unseen result? They are now very easily surprised and nervous, meaning that the walk from their pen to the truck to take them away can often cause a heart attack in the pig, killing it before it can be taken to be used as meat.

Now, doing that to pigs is one thing. Doing that, especially for no purpose besides aesthetics, to humans?

Not so cool with that.

Don’t get me wrong – I am ALL FOR genetic testing when used to act against or prevent diseases and so forth. Practical uses make sense, as long as we’re, you know, careful.

But honestly, while it’ll probably actually happen someday, the idea of people choosing their kid’s weight or eye color or whatever makes me uncomfortable. I wouldn’t be surprised if at some point some fad trait (red curly hair!) also caused some genetic disorder in basically an entire generation of adults who were the result of that fad.

fillyjonk: Well then I guess you’re all about aborting fat babies, then, and good luck to you.

The only way you could think that from what I’ve said was if I thought fat was bad, which would be odd since I just said it wasn’t in my first post.

Implicit argument? Did you miss the part where I said “Aryan ideal”?

I’m sorry, I switched who I was addressing in the middle of a sentence, from you in particular to a more general audience. In general, your example comes up a lot, without the explicit part.

(Tara just got a post reposted on Racialicious on how that plays out in eye color, if you’re interested in hearing a WOC’s perspective on these beauty standards, which something tells me you aren’t)

Now why would you think that?

And frankly, I’d be more than a little disappointed in anyone whose alarm bells didn’t go off when talking about an implacable drive towards making the population fit better with Aryan beauty standards through genetic manipulation or selective breeding (including selective gestation).

I’m not equating beauty with perfection. In fact, I can see why it would be bad for reasons brought up by Time-Machine. What I was responding to was, “The concern I think is less for the preservation of fat than it is for the preservation of imperfect humanity.” The idea of “imperfection is desirable” is what I had a problem with, regardless of the correctness of the idea it’s being used as a basis for.

Whether believing in the pursuit of perfection means also believing in the pursuit of Aryan beauty ideals depends on whether or not the person believes that Aryan beauty, or adherence to a particular beauty standard at all, is a subset of perfection, which I do not, but which you’re taking for granted.

all you ladies who talk about short legs – i hope you realize u can easily have your pants hemmed.

also, i love city shorts and i do think they are sorta business attire, with a high heel or boot and the right top, esp if they are part of a little suit. not that i dress that business-like; i just put them with anything.
i don’t like the ones that go to the ankle. i like either full length, or about to the knee (maybe slightly longer with some boots, but really at the knee is nice).

also, i love the comments u guys are making in response to monica’s response to kate.

a) why should I have to pay extra (in money or in time) to get pants that fit my leg length? (This goes equally or more for TALL women, who have even fewer options, of course)

b) “easily” is in the eye of the beholder–what about pants with cuffs? pants with designs at the ankle? pants that taper or flare? Some of these are difficult, time-consuming, expensive, and/or annoying to make fit me. Some of them are downright impossible.

c) why do men’s pants come in a huge assortment of lengths (at one to two inch inseam intervals), or completely unhemmed and with custom-hemming included in the price? Whereas women’s pants come in–IF we are lucky–3 lengths? Hmmmm… sexist assumptions of women being “easily able” to sew, perhaps?

I’m an inbred blue-eyed as well. Only one in my immediate family, which when I was little led me to believe I must have been adopted or something. I was actually a bit upset because my eyes didn’t look like the rest of my family’s. Though my mom would always cheer me up by calling me her blue-eyed baby.

And then depress me again by putting lemon in my hair and telling me to go outside and play in the sun.

This is WAAAAY upthread now, but I had thought that pain from wearing high heels was more about your foot size than your weight…the smaller the foot, the more it’s forced into an unnatural position, the more pressure it takes, hence more pain/damage. (Anecdata: I wear a size 5 1/2 shoe and I do have some heels, but they kill my feet. My sister’s an 11 and, when she can find cute heels in her size, wears ’em all day and all night with no trouble.) I don’t know if this is really true…maybe my mom made it up to make sure I didn’t wear what she considered “slutty” shoes when I was a teenager!

Yeah, I think my mom made that up, or at least repeated it, because I wanted to buy shoes she thought were inappropriate and it was easier to just tell me they would hurt. Probably the REAL difference between my sister and I on this is that she has a wicked high pain threshold and I am a huge wimp!

Cindy, I don’t know your exact situation with your puppy, and I certainly don’t want to give you false hope, but the same thing happened with my best friend and her puppy. Her Husky mix Sam was born with serious heart defects, too. The vet told her that he would never make it to adulthood and could die at any time. She didn’t necessarily have to have him put down, because he wasn’t in any pain, but she should expect his heart to just “give out” one day soon. Well, he defied all the predictions. Every time the vet saw him she marvelled that he was still alive – the vet actually called it a miracle. Yes, his condition caused him some problems – shortness of breath and fatigue, especially in hot, humid weather. And he was never able to be neutered because anesthesia would be too dangerous. But he lived past 10 years old – a good, long life for such a large dog. Don’t give up hope. It could happen for your puppy, too. And I fervently hope it does.

I don’t think it’s necessarily weight or foot size that makes heels uncomfortable. I have an “average” foot size (8w-8.5) and weigh the same or less than all my friends that try to force me into high heels so I’ll be “sexier”. I appreciate what they’re trying to do, but what is an annoying discomfort for them leaves me crying from the pain.

To be fair, there’s a good chance I have fibromyalgia, so that may be part of it. (Mom has it and the doc thinks I have it, but I need to find a rheumatologist that accepts the student insurance)

AnotherKate, it makes sense, though, on the “snowshoe principle” — i.e., a larger foot has more surface area for distributing weight while a smaller foot bears the brunt in a more concentrated fashion.

I have considered the idea that my fibromyalgia and/or arthritis play a role in this, ksfeminist, and I think they do — but I don’t think that’s the whole story, because I used to wear heels all the time. I just… bleh, I don’t know. The whole “being heavier makes heels hurt more” thing made sense in my head, but the more y’all write about it here, the less sense it makes. Damn. Maybe my fibrothritis (shut up, it’s a word if I say it’s a word :P) has just gotten worse in the last couple of years.

I don’t know if it’s harder for tall women to find pants, but I do know if you’re as short as me and take a 3X, nothing fits lengthwise. They *assume* that anyone who’s a 3X is taller than I am. So the capris or whatever you call them end up being…well, almost to my ankle, but forget being long *enough* (not to mention they’re way too wide at the bottom to be down that low) and the full length pants drag the floor. My sleeves look like I’m trying to play dressup from my mom’s closet, and “short” sleeves are below the elbow.

So…clothes suck ass. I hate thinking about them and buying them. And getting them hemmed? I want to go into the store, pick something up and get out, not try to figure out where I can go to have something hemmed, stand for a measuring (forget it) and then PAY more when I just broke the bank buying clothes I have to have because the old ones are completely worn out. Sigh. I’d never do it. Just like I never could keep up on developing film and making baby books.

I am constantly sad that I can’t wear heels of any height. See, I have rheumatoid arthritis, and my left ankle/foot doesn’t BEND the right way to wear heels. I bought some awesome $10 boots at Avenue’s clearance sales back in February, but I can’t WEAR them. :( :( :(

It’s hard enough to find shoes that fit a 7.5WW foot, but to have to eliminate any and all heeled varieties, also? Is it any wonder I wear sneakers and Docs almost exclusively? :p

I got the OMG MOST ADORABLE SHOEZ EVER last week from Famous Footwear, on clearance for $10. Score! (I have to brag, because it was the only good thing that’s happened in the last two weeks). So it was the opening of the new store, and I was so excited to have a decent-priced shoe store in town, and saw them on the clearance rack and couldn’t believe they were actually a 7.5 W. Then I was so so sad because when I wore them the next day I got blisters on both my feet, but then out of desperation because I had no other good black shoes I tried them again with real socks instead of nylon trouser socks, and they were sooo comfy. I just seriously can never find shoes to fit my oddly shaped feet, and I’m so happy. They’re Eurostep, and look like this.

I know I sound like a stupid git, but this has been the semester from hell and it’s just the one little nice thing that’s happened. The other dress shoes I had were el cheapo Kmart and two years old and I was getting severe leg pain every stinking night from wearing them. Hopefully I’ll be able to get to sleep at night now.

1. Squeee! I got a gig reviewing restaurants for my local paper. First one in print today!

2. High heels are evil. Even if you learn to wear them with moderate comfort, in later life you will get foot and back problems. I
m not 100% opposed to them, though. They are pretty cool fetish items, and can look amazing.

I believe that high heels are best suited to those situations when you have a minion or four to carry you around. Never when you actually have to use a foot for things like walking or standing. Some dance styles, too, work best with heels – but like running, such activities can cause injury and should be engaged in with caution.

3. Mid-calf length long shorts are my fave summer wear. Great for cycling. No pudgy knees on show.

6. Can you get those shoe colour change paints for your yucky off-beige character shoes? And clip on shiny things? Old clip-on earrings from the charity shops, and a touch of glue, and there’s your creative project of the day.

Aww, I’m way late to the thread. I’ve been thinking about how to be less of a couch potato and maybe even eat healthier, but I’m scared of my latent diet mentality (despite never really dieting). I’ve been looking at HAES resources and just getting more confused about what to change, whether to change anything at all, etc… bleh.

Also I want to be working on a sewing project for myself, but I’m working on an embroidery commission for someone else instead.

car, those shoes are seriously adorable. I am so envious right now — my shoe outlets are Wal-Mart and Payless, for real. Stupid podunk town.

I am hopping into the capris/pants discussion to mention that this season’s capris look like ass. When did tapered capris come into style? They’re terrible. I thought capris were meant to be straight or a little flared! Also, since when are capris made out of parachute material? Because that also looks terrible. I have no idea what I’m going to wear this spring and summer.

Cath…that sorbet recipe, and the Nutella ice cream one it links to, have made me start trying to figure out how to get the frozen apparatus-thing of my ice cream machine out of my ex-MIL’s freezer. It might require the CIA.

Oh, you MUST try the nutella one, if you like nutella. It is unbelievably simple, and so good. The canned milk was subject to a bit of cultural confusion in the discussion, so note that you definitely want the non-sweetened kind, and preferably non-fat, too. Whether it’s called “evaporated milk” or “condensed milk” doesn’t matter. There’s enough fat and sugar in the nutella – this isn’t a diet thing but a texture balance thing.

And the mango sorbet is great, too. I used that recipe as a base to make other fruit sorbets, too – with autumn arriving, quince and pear sorbets featured at my last dinner party.

I am putting a “poetry exercise” on my site. I’d love to see how many folks will participate. “Write a poem today, declare yourself a member of the intelligentsia tomorrow!” Is that a t-shirt already, or can I trademark that saying?

By the way, I think this swap-out-seasonal-soaps thing could really catch on.

You know, I was shoe hunting today and just about fed up with how everything hurt my feet. I do know this though (I have designed shoes):
–2″ is the maximum heel height your foot can handle comfortably. above that, you are putting major force on your toe bones, and over time this will cause tiny stress fractures. This goes for everyone–fat, thin, ect…

–If you have Plantar Facitis, heel spurs, shortened ligaments in your foot or painful toes, get 2 cans of frozen juice and everyday, at the end of the day, roll your feet back and forth over the cans, for 10 minutes.Then take some ibuprofen or Tylenol and put your feet up. Then first thing in the morning, before you get out of bed, point and flex your feet 20 times, or roll your feet over 2 tennis balls or both. Doing this will help to stretch out your ligaments and reduce pain in your feet.

The other reason why heels hurt is because most of them are made cheaply. You wouldn’t believe what goes into a really high end pair of heels compared to what the average person can afford. They are a real engineering feet (pun!) let me tell you. That kind of shoe is usually $300+

It’s 9:47 p.m. Pacific time, and I’m just getting to the bottom of the thread. My tummy hurts. I am always the last one to post, because I can’t get to the friggin’ computer until 9:47 p.m. No one wants to read what I write, anyway. And I had such important, witty and good things to say about selecting non-fat babies — such as the fat sperm is heavier, so it sink to the bottom when you spin them in the centerfuge — so you can just skim the skinny sperm off of the top.

I’m just over 5 feet tall, so capris are always the wrong length on me — the come down just far enough to graze my ankle (floods, anyone?) and are always somehow too wide. They look like circus pants on me.

I’m also having a bad body-image day, which my mind tells me is just an “accurate” body image day. Thanks, mind. That really helps.

And I hate that Democracy Now caused the loss of sanity watcher’s points. That progressives have somehow conflated “fat cat capitalists” with fat people in general, or that somehow all fat people are just sheep, eating from the corporate trough, makes me stabby.

Thanks, fellow left-coaster Meowser. I have composed a brilliant essay on that exact topic about 10 times in my head while driving after hearing something infuriatingly anti-fat on NPR or Pacifica but usually I’m not in a position to write it down right then, so it just gets stored (probably in my fat cells — haha) until the next time.

You know, when I feel like eating more calories than my body burns, I go find someone who is starving, and I say, “hey, I don’t really need more food, obviously” (patting my belly) “but I’m feeling hungry, and even though I have the money, I think I would like to take the food, that meager amount of food you have, right there, and put it in my mouth. Ah-ah-ah — that’s right, hand it over, yes, that grain of rice, too.” I’ve never done anything like donate to Oxfam or supported anti-hunger initiatives or increasing foreign aid, or anything.
(just in case someone who tends to take things literally is reading this — the previous paragraph was an exercise in sarcasm.)

Yeah, they make it sound as though if I skip fries and have a salad, someone in sub-Saharan Africa gets to eat that night. Um, no, sorry, it does NOT work that way. Not even close. Doesn’t anyone remember as a kid being told by a parent that they had to eat their greens because of people starving in (fill in country name), and then retorting, “Well, where’s an envelope? If they want my broccoli so bad, I’ll MAIL it to them”? It sounds like their take on how food is distributed hasn’t gone very far beyond that.

Re: plantar fasciitis
What you need is a pair of these: https://plus37.safe-order.net/cgi-heelspurs/a/b.cgi?p=pin
(No, I don’t work for the company.) A couple years ago, I was nearly disabled by plantar fasciitis, and nothing relieved it, including wearing a foot brace at night (I later found out that almost every member of my extended family had had this condition at some point).
These insoles will make your feet really hurt for a day or so (because of the high arch, which is what’s important, not heel cushioning or any such thing). After that, they are *miraculous*.

I adore heels. And since I tower over most people in flats where I live now, I really tower over people in my heels. I have been feeling the need for a pair of red wedge sandals lately, but unfortunately there are only two shoe stores that I can find that stock my size. One is Marks and Spencer, and their shoes run matronly. The other one is a two-hour bus ride away, and I don’t have time for that. *sigh*

I also love capris, and to celebrate the nasty, hot, sticky, humid weather we’ve been having (I love living in the tropics, let me tell you), I bought a new pair yesterday. I also had a scoop of lemon and a scoop of raspberry sorbet from Haagen Dazs. When I ate them together it tasted like frozen raspberry lemonade, and it was heaven.

@DawnD – sorry, i didn’t mean to dismiss your difficulty finding pants, or imply that you SHOULD have to hem them.
i just meant it as a practical solution to an existing, less than perfect situation. and by easy, i just meant that it’s easier (and cheaper) than most other alterations i know of.
for instance – if you’re short waisted like me and have trouble finding shirts or jackets that fit both the shape of your torso and the length or your arms (not to mention the size of your boobs), i don’t think it’s nearly as easy (or as cheap) an alteration. also, at least we can shorten pants; if someone is so tall that nothing fits them, they can’t add fabric. My friend who is very very tall has that problem so compared with her i consider myself lucky that i can always shorten a pant leg or a leeve, but she can’t very well lengthen one (letting out the hem usually isn’t enough for her).

As for high heels – for me, it’s always been a matter of the shape of my foot. I have flat feet and so much pain from them, i need orthodic inserts. I try to where some heels now and then, maybe walk to work in my sneakers and switch shoes at work, but really i end up wearing sneakers as often as possible. Even ballet flats are no good for me, tho if i put my inserts in it’s sorta bearable.

Gretchen – I think you’re right about people being reluctant to apply for entry level and/or low wage jobs due in part to fear of rejection. After all, if you’re a college grad and get turned down for a job that doesn’t require much in the way of education, it’s definitely a slap in the face. I know my friends and I used to joke about “Well, there’s always Walmart” but every so often someone would admit that there was a little voice in the back of their head saying, “But, hey, what if even they won’t hire you?” Getting rejected by Walmart or Mickey D’s or Merry Maids would really do a number on a person’s self esteem.

The other reason, of course, that a lot of jobs are being done by immigrants is that employers are just outright fucking over employees — they hire illegals so they can avoid paying even a minimum wage, so they can commit tax fraud (i.e., withhold income tax from workers but then not turn it into the IRS), so they can get away with paying cash, which means no workers compensation fund payments made by the employer, and a host of other shitty (from the viewpoint of society) reasons. It isn’t that legal workers don’t want to do the jobs — it’s that the employers don’t want workers who know their rights and will recognize when they’re getting screwed. Illegals don’t complain about unsafe working conditions, being underpaid, being forced to work mandatory overtime for no money, etc., because all the employer has to do to shut them up is call La Migra.

We’ve had three sweet old cats with chronic, terminal illnesses. Our vet told us that we would know when the right time was. That she couldn’t tell us how we would know, but that we would know.

And she was right. The way that we knew was different for each of the cats so that’s why our vet couldn’t tell us how we would know. And we were there, comforting and petting our cats through the whole thing, and we saw that the procedure was not frightening for the cats, though it was immeasurably sad for us and for our vet and her staff.

So, if your puppy is not suffering, why not take it day by day. I hope that the days add up to years and years and years.

Thanks for the plantar fasciitis tips, all. I knew about stretching my foot in the morning, but using frozen juice cans is a new one. I’ll definitely be trying that tonight. Interesting that arch support has something to do with it, vidya. I’ve had flat feet for as long as I can remember.

And yes, wrt2, I completely identify when it comes to writing NPR letters in my head when they enrage me. I read somewhere that they have a reported dedicated to the obesity crisis. FA seems like such a natural fit for progressivism, but the only time anyone has ever confronted me about my weight in public was at a moveon.org event. It makes me sad.

The weather is getting nice here on the east coast, which means i want to be outside more. I prefer to exercise outside, though, with the warmer weather, out come the jerks who like to heckle me.

Any good quips on how to handle this? I hate to say anything back, knowing it just gives them satisfaction, but i hate ignoring it too, as if i’m silently complicit. And sometimes the comments bother me so much that it makes me not want to exercise at all. How do you all handle this?
And why the fuck do people have the need to comment on the appearance of others?????? (rhetorical, of course)

[i]I am neither unaware of, or unsympathetic to, the difficult problem of weight control. My father was my height and weighed, at one point in his life, 240 pounds. At 170-180 pounds, I feel I have been overweight my whole adult life, and have been unable to get at or near my ideal weight.[/i]

Arg. Arg. Arg. So near and yet so far. I think he’s good hearted but he’s fallen for the whole fat-is-scary-thing.

Katia, on April 9th, 2008 at 1:52 pm Said:
Gene Weingarten posted this on his chat update today:

[i]I am neither unaware of, or unsympathetic to, the difficult problem of weight control. My father was my height and weighed, at one point in his life, 240 pounds. At 170-180 pounds, I feel I have been overweight my whole adult life, and have been unable to get at or near my ideal weight.[/i]

Arg. Arg. Arg. So near and yet so far. I think he’s good hearted but he’s fallen for the whole fat-is-scary-thing.

So, it *was* himself, and he must have been the SHORT mustachioed guy in New York University’s University Heights campus in Bronx, New York, who told me 36 years ago, when I asked about my writing for the campus rag, “You’re fat. Get out of here ..”

Memory is a funny thing!

(That is the closest I think he comes to admitting his vertically challenged stature …)

Please be careful when you wear heels!!! I lived in my 3″ heels (I’m 5’1) and damaged the nerves in my feet, had to get cortizone shots in the balls of my feet, and now I can only wear flat, orthopedic shoes…

Seriously, my closet made me cry for weeks until I gave all of my shoes to my aunt.

EmmKay, if it’s any comfort there’s a study which showed a correlation between the amount of exercise boys got and their waist size, but it didn’t find the same correlation for girls. The article is all about worrying about fat too, but I thought that particular bit was interesting:

So exercise may well be more effective for your husband than it would be for you. Men and women do not have identical metabolisms, anymore than the naturally thin versus the naturally normal versus the naturally fat. For a more personal take, when my husband gets sick and loses weight he can usually maintain that weight loss; where I almost never lose weight from illness and if I do it comes right back when I feel better.

There was another interesting study done in mice, showing that testosterone interacts with a specific muscle protein to reduce fatigue. If they removed the protein from male mice they got as tired as the normal females; and if they added testosterone to female mice they only got as fatigued as the male mice. The other interesting thing is that this protein is involved in muscle pain. Chronic muscle pain and chronic fatigue often, very often, occur together; and are also more often diagnosed in women, perhaps testosterone protects men from the effects of this protein. So we may be getting some information on the biological roots of chronic fatigue, chronic pain, and fibromyalgia. That would be really cool.

And I made tasty lime bars for dessert last night, a treat for my husband. Very rich, so you can’t eat more than one or two at a time. I used the Cook’s Illustrated recipe for lemon bars for the filling, substituting lime for the lemon juice and zest; and a graham cracker crust. I love Cook’s Illustrated.

Don’t you fucking love it when people defend their own fatphobia by saying they’re “sympathetic” to your “weight problem”? Guess what, Gene: I am not sympathetic to YOUR weight problem, the one where you have a problem with me being the weight I am. I have no fucking sympathy for that whatsoever. And if you think you understand me because you think you’re too fat, you couldn’t be more wrong.

I don’t know how they’d be for various widths (my feet are pretty average, although flat and generally problematic in other ways), but can I just say:

Danskos!

They’re spendy, but so worth it. They have basically two types of footbed, the “clog” kind and the “shoe” kind, and all their shoes fit in one of those two ways, so you know if one fits others will too. And they’re, like, miracle anti-pain shoes, at least for my particular issues. I’m on my feet a lot, too. Love ’em.

In other news, my mom (who’s fairly tall and very self-conscious about it, and thus never wears heels) recently had to have surgery to remove some serious bunions. Her problem was that she’d somehow gotten into her head that she wore a size 9, when she should have been wearing a 9 1/2… and that small misjudgment was enough to completely warp her big toe and cause her massive pain. The moral of this story is, if you haven’t been measured for a while, have it done!

I don’t know what bothers me more: That I highly doubt any of the people in the photos are fat enough to qualify for the surgery, or that it’s a really well-done and creative way to convey the message, even though the message itself is despicable.

Meowser: “Doesn’t anyone remember as a kid being told by a parent that they had to eat their greens because of people starving in (fill in country name), and then retorting, “Well, where’s an envelope? If they want my broccoli so bad, I’ll MAIL it to them”?”

:D The whole “We Are the World”/Live Aid fundraisers for Ethiopian famine were around when I was in early elementary school, and I was definitely a picky eater back then. I remember one night when my exasperated mother reminded me of all the starving Ethiopian children. My innocent and completely sincere response was along the lines of “Well, I don’t want it and I don’t need it. I’m okay if we send it to the starving kids.” Mom never tried that line again.

Heels: I wear Clarks almost exlcusively now; it seems like everything else (i’m looking at YOU, gorgeous Michael Kors gold d’orsay sandals!) just kill my feet, no matter how pretty. But where can I find all the pretty shoes Clarks has online at the UK site? Seems like endless only has a few styles. And Momma needs a new pair of summer work shoes.

Does anyone know how to wear hats in the summertime, and if so, how to pair them with outfits? I’d begin with dresses for church, but would like to eventually branch out for events. I’ve been seeing some *really* cute hats lately but haven’t a clue how to wear them.

Also, what’s up with the summer dress shortage? I don’t wear shorts (Thighs of Thunder, hear my cry), but love dresses. And besides the slim pickings at old Navy, i’m hard pressed to find anything cotton and flattering (and it looks like my other go-to-store for cheap plus sizes doesn’t offer dresses above size 16 anymore: SJP/Bitten only had 2-16 when I looked for a dress there last week). Thoughts?

I don’t know what bothers me more: That I highly doubt any of the people in the photos are fat enough to qualify for the surgery, or that it’s a really well-done and creative way to convey the message, even though the message itself is despicable.
How about that the website says it’s a PSA?!

fillyjonk, on April 9th, 2008 at 2:20 pm Said:
I am neither unaware of, or unsympathetic to, the difficult problem of weight control.

Don’t you f__ing love it when people defend their own fatphobia by saying they’re “sympathetic” to your “weight problem”? Guess what, Gene: I am not sympathetic to YOUR weight problem, the one where you have a problem with me being the weight I am. I have no fucking sympathy for that whatsoever. And if you think you understand me because you think you’re too fat, you couldn’t be more wrong.

Even if he were to meet me today–36 years later, I am no longer gravitationally gifted. Touched on my (personal) ideal weight a few months prior (due to an involuntariy rush of activity in my everyday life, some stomach problems, etc.) and a welcome regain of a couple pounds as things died down.

I can imagine he has a problem with women being double digit (U.S.) sizes, which I am of course.

Rihian, do the Danskos run wide? I wear a 7.5-8WW, and have a really hard time finding shoes that fit. I would LOVE to be able to find shoes that I knew I could just wear! (Even if they are expensive – shoot, I’m already shelling out cash for damn dance shoes!)

Also, I’d be interested to know where folks are located, and if there’s anyone in the Los Angeles area, would you want to meet for coffee? New friends: yay!

Marste: “Rihian, do the Danskos run wide? I wear a 7.5-8WW, and have a really hard time finding shoes that fit. I would LOVE to be able to find shoes that I knew I could just wear! (Even if they are expensive – shoot, I’m already shelling out cash for damn dance shoes!)”

I’m not Rihian, but yes, Danskos run a bit wide. I’d advise finding a shop that carries them and trying them on in a few styles before buying them. I love my Danskos, but not all styles fit the same way, unfortunately. Since my heels (but not the rest of my feet) are narrow and Danskos aren’t supposed to fit snugly in the heel, IMO they’re perfect.

Problem with the Dansko clogs is my feet run TALL. That roll at the edge cuts right into my instep. (I have narrow heels, too, and the clogs are nearly too wide for me as it is, so going up in width isn’t an answer.) I’m not crazy about the non-clog styles — they seem like they’re trying too hard and failing.

C&C Swedish clogs, FTR, don’t have that roll and are pretty comfortable.

Kate, apropos nothing, I’ve been far more hungry today than any day I can remember. I’ve had four big meals and a bowl of cake batter (food of the gods) because that was what my body wanted, and it refused to be full otherwise.

You’re probably thinking “What’s your point?” My point is that before I found this blog there is NO WAY IN HELL I would have let myself eat four meals in one day, no matter how hungry I was. And eating cake batter on top of that…I would felt guilty for DAYS. And then I would either have restricted my eating for the next week, or thought, “What the hell, I’ve already eaten bad food,” and eaten everything in sight til I felt sick. That’s all I knew about how to cope with this situation.

Right now? I am happy, and pleasantly full. I honored my body, and I had four healthy meals and a few yummy snacks today. I think it’s odd I was so hungry and I’m making a note of it in case it continues, but I suspect hormones are to blame so I’m not that bothered. I’m not panicky, guilty, angry at or disappointed with myself, I’m not adding up the calories of what I ate today in my head, and I’m not planning how I can “fix” what I did “wrong” today by being harder on myself tomorrow. That is such a change I CAN’T EVEN TELL YOU.

You and FJ and SM really are making a difference here; or at least, you’ve made a difference to me. Thank you.

How about we discuss this series of truly appalling ads for a bariatric surgery center

While we’re at it, can we discuss how much the rash of ads for the lap-band on my t.v. lately have been pissing me off? Seriously, it’s like every other commercial, and I am fucking sick of it. It’s the commercial where they have people (who are not even that fat!) talking about how if they lost the weight, they could do all these things, like fly more often and shop for clothes, and it makes me want to mail all of them Kate’s post on The Fantasy of Being Thin. Also, it makes me want to punch the motherfuckers who think that it’s cool to make people a bunch of false promises about how awesome their lives will be to get them to agree to unnecessary, dangerous surgery. Assholes.

Oh, and also? Dan Marino? It pains me to say this, because I respect and admire both your tremendous athletic accomplishments and your work for raising autism awareness and services for children with neuro-developmental disorders, but STFU. You are a former professional athlete. The fact that you gained a few pounds and then lost them on NutriSystem has no bearing whatsoever on, like, 95% of the population. Seriously, stop embarrassing yourself.

@Colleen (but not prettypear Colleen) – I was appalled last summer to hear that my step-mother had gotten a lap-band, when I doubt that she was even 200 pounds at the time. (She’s about 5′ 6″ or so.) It was well before I found the sphereosphere, but I still found it crazy that a doctor had agreed to do that to her and insurance had paid for it.

I don’t see her much (we don’t get along for unrelated reasons), so I was very surprised when I saw her at my father’s funeral in February. Her stomach had swollen to probably two or three times the size of the last time I had seen her, and her face was only slightly heavier. It must have gone horribly wrong.

Marste, I think Danskos do run a bit wide. A friend of mine who generally wears normal width shoes has to go narrow, at least for their clog style.

Zappos carries them, so that’s an easy return process if it doesn’t work out. They tend to be sold at decent shoe stores, too, where the employees are trained on how to fit shoes well and will actually, like, assist you.

OK, I just went to the doctor’s office for the yearly girlie appt, and the minion that you see before you see the doc took my weight (176) but not my height (5’11”) The doc came in and went over the results and brought up my weight as “a little high”.

Dudes, I don’t even know what to say. Yeah, BMI is a stupid, back-asswards number that has fuck-all to do with health, but apparently some docs are shifting to a system of considering your weight as a number independent of your height, and arbitrarily deciding whether you’re “too heavy” or not, without even freaking looking at you, or knowing the first thing about your history.

I had brought The Beauty Myth as waiting room reading material, and considered pressing it on her as a parting gift. Next time I’ll bring Susan Bordo instead.

@lapidary:
I’ve told this story here before, but I had a fairly recent health care encounter where a nurse practitioner told me over the phone that I should lose weight, and then said to me, “You are overweight, right? I don’t have your chart here in front of me.” So I totally feel you on the health care people apparently thinking that all people, regardless of actual situation, should be trying to lose weight.

@Colleen (but not prettypear Colleen) – Heh, “flat-ass crazy”. I need to use that sometime.

It was particularly crazy because she had severe issues with her digestive system already, which have landed her in the hospital for several days at least yearly for the last few years. I have NO idea what kind of irresponsible doctor agreed to put that thing in. I hope that the damage is correctable.

*Substantia raises her hand, no easy feat since my arm may well be as big around as Posh Spice’s waist*

Fodder for discussion? Scarlet Magazine’s anti-fatism petition.

The UK mainstream women’s mag is royally cheesed off at the prevalence of fat folks being demeaned on TV. You’ll need to hold your nose through the fatties-gonna-die stuff, but I believe their hearts are in the right place.

I’ve been in Cardiology for a few weeks during med school, where the medical team made it their goal to scare everyone into losing weight. Because the most sensible step for someone recovering from cardial surgery is constant hunger and intense exercise.

The procedure was to look people up and down, label them “obese” and put them on a 1200 calories a day, stat. I saw several men who had BMIs of 22 or so, but were labeled “obese” because some 26 year old cardio resident thought they looked like they could lose a little weight around the belly.